Tag: Attorney

A week after Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked what’s known as the “Cole Memo,” an Obama-era policy that gave legal cannabis in America a semblance of cover, Khader “Al” Shawa stood in front of his medical marijuana dispensary, Shambhala Medical Cannabis Collective, holding an outsized pair of scissors.

His store in San Francisco’s Mission District, one of the roughly 1,100 businesses that held a sales permit to sell medical marijuana in California last year, was marking its first day open for business to all customers aged 21 and up. The beginning of the state’s recreational marijuana era ballooned their potential customer base from the 1.5 million state residents with a doctor’s note to anyone eligible to buy a drink.

The two talked onstage with Kara about sexual harassment and Silicon Valley culture.

On this special edition of Recode Decode, hosted by Kara Swisher, Tony West and Eric Holder joined Kara onstage at the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign event in San Francisco to talk about the current spate of sexual harassment allegations and the subsequent fallout, plus the ongoing legal challenges that still exist for Uber. West is Uber’s new general counsel, and Holder is the attorney general who investigated Uber’s company dysfunction.

You can listen to the entire interview in the audio player below. We’ve also provided a lightly edited complete transcript of their conversation.

Kara Swisher: Recode Radio presents Recode Decode, coming to you from the Vox Media podcast network. Hi, I’m Kara Swisher, executive editor of Recode. You may know me as an undercover Uber driver, my alias is Sarah Kwisher, but in my spare time I talk tech. You’re listening to Recode Decode, a podcast about tech and media’s key players, big ideas and how they’re changing the world we live in. You can find more episodes of Recode Decode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play Music or wherever you listen to podcasts, or just visit recode.net/podcast for more.

Today we’re going to play an interview I conducted at an event hosted by the Phenomenal Woman Action Campaign in San Francisco. I talked to former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder and Uber General Counsel Tony West about everything that has happened at Uber in 2017. Let’s take a listen.

Thank you so much. I like your whole thing about allies and power, but I’ve got to say, you really just should be in power.

Tony West: I agree with that.

KS: I’m the CEO of my company. I boss around men all day long and it’s totally enjoyable, including my two poor sons who have to put up with it. Anyway, I am well known as a grumpy old lady who makes life hard for mostly white young men of Silicon Valley.

Eric Holder: That’s good.

But now I’m moving on here, I’m expending. In any case, we’re going to start by talking about this idea of allies. But I do … it’s really hard for me not to start with the fact that you’re both involved with Uber, which is probably one of the most toxic cultures I’ve ever seen in my … And I was there …

TW: You know, he was involved with Uber before I was involved with Uber.

That’s true.

EH: I’m the fixer, remember?

I’m going to preface that, that it’s not your fault, that it’s not your fault but now it’s your responsibility.

TW: That’s right, that’s right. That’s right.

But I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that lightly because I literally have been covering the internet since Al Gore invented it, and by the way he did. He was there at the beginning. I’ve been covering tech for 25 years in Washington, when the internet was first made commercial.

I want to first start talking about Uber, because I think … The reason I want to talk about it, because it does represent the quintessence of all that is horrible about the male white culture of Silicon Valley. Let’s start with Tony: Why the hell did you take this on? What do you hope to accomplish? Because I’m going to start by saying, you put out a … I have so many questions. Glutton for punishment seems to begin with it, but you started out with a really great memo that Johana Bhuiyan, who’s in the audience, who covers Uber and other transportation issues for Recode, wrote about.

We got the memo, we published it. It was a really tough memo on what the legal situation at Uber should be right now. I think it was long and damning and about some standards. Can you talk about it a little bit? Because I want to talk about … because this goes to the heart of dealing with sexism and sexual harassment and all kinds of other issues there.

TW: Kara, it’s nice to be here.

EH: I don’t know, Tony, I think we’ll see. We’ll see.

[To Holder] I’ve got some questions for you.

EH: Thanks.

TW: No, look, I think a lot of questions, good questions … The reason I wrote the memo is because it needed to be written. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, my first day, my first official day on the job, we announced a data breach that had occurred a year before. It had not been reported to affected parties.

So my first official day I spent on the phone talking to a number of state regulators, state AGs, FTC commissioners, saying, “Hi, my name is Tony West. I’m new. By the way …” And over that weekend I began to really get into — because this was the day before Thanksgiving, actually — and then over the weekend I began to try to get an awareness of some of the legal issues. Early that next week I learned about some practices that a component of our security department had been engaged in, which involved human surveillance for competitive intelligence.

Look, I’ve been in public sector, I’ve been in private sector, you don’t have to be a well credentialled lawyer to look at that and say, “What the hell is this?” So when I learned about it, I talked with Dara, who said, “What the hell is this?” I wrote a note to the security team, who was at that time, just that day, had now been reporting to me because the person who had led that team had been terminated as a result of not disclosing the breach.

I said something very simple, which is that first I am actually very proud to be at Uber. Notwithstanding all of the things that you’ve said, which I think there’s ample justification for a lot of what you said, but I am very proud to be at Uber. They are incredibly talented people, incredibly dynamic environment, doing what I really do believe is going to change the future of work and the way that we think about how people and things move. Absolutely groundbreaking.

I said that in my memo, but what I also said was, I’ve also learned some things. I’ve learned, and it’s reaffirmed to me that I made the right decision, but what I’ve also learned are some things that disturbed me. Not disclosing the breach is one, this human surveillance for competitive intelligence is another.

I said, “Look, we don’t need to do that.” That’s not who we are, we’re better than that. We have better technology, we have better people. We have a better product. We don’t need to follow people around to gain competitive intelligence. Everything we have to do as a company has to rest on three things: It has to rest on transparency, integrity in everything that we do and accountability.

I want to talk about this because in this case, spying on Lyft and things like that …

Right, I know. I’m aware. What I’m talking about is, because it led the legal department … this is what I want to get into, is these structural systems that are in place at these companies that create situations that are not just spying on people, not just hacking, but really systematic inability of the legal departments to really protect people at these companies, especially women. That’s what seems to have happened at Uber. It’s not just women who work at Uber, it’s women who ride Uber, all kinds of things that they’ve been up to that have been really disturbing.

I want to talk to both of you about … And Eric, you did the Holder Report, which chronicled all kinds of problems there, which were myriad, which I wish you would release because I think people should see exactly the extent of the toxicity so we can understand it. But let’s talk about where you … We’ll get to the idea of male allies. I think human allies is the way I look at it. But what can legal departments do to do this? Because I think that a lot of the problems at Uber had to do with the aggregation of responsibility by the lawyers there who did this, who were in a place to say, “No.”

We broke a story about an executive at Uber who was carrying around the medical file of a rape victim in India in order to try to prove that she wasn’t raped. Which was appalling, that he was holding onto a criminal file in this thing. The lawyer at Uber did not get it away from him when they were aware of it. Lots of things like this. Can you talk about the responsibilities of the legal department to protect especially women? Because every time it seemed like there was some issue around women and the rights that were abrogated by the previous management there.

EH: Okay, well, you have to understand, I don’t have …

Because in general the legal department …

EH: Let’s talk generally, because I don’t have the ability to release the report. I think as attorney for the company there’s only so much I can say about what it is that we did.

Right, kara@recode.net is fine. Or Signal. WhatsApp is encrypted.

EH: Yeah, that won’t get me in any trouble. But what I think …

Your name could be “Shmeric.”

EH: Who’d know, right?

Yeah. No, I don’t know who you are.

EH: I think legal departments have to be empowered. They can’t be ignored. They also have to understand that there’s a responsibility, a particular responsibility I think that lawyers have in the context of an organization, whether that’s in government or it’s in the private sector. It’s in the same way that the justice department occupies a special place within the executive branch of the United States’ government. We are the watchdogs.

Right, when it works properly.

EH: Yeah, when it works properly, yeah.

I’m referring to Trump, just FYI.

EH: I wasn’t even going to go there, but …

You did on Twitter.

EH: But tonight I was going to be nice.

All right. Okay, fine. Please don’t. Wouldn’t you rather be tired and winning? Talk about the role of lawyers, because I think that’s what I’m talking about, where the roles are. Because again, the New York Times today had another story off of Ronan Farrow’s story about the complicity of lawyers, of PR people, of the media, everybody in this. So I’d like to get to that idea of how you create systems, where especially lawyers to me are the watchdogs of that.

EH: I think lawyers, given the training that we have, the place that we are supposed to occupy in these entities, that we are the ones who should be responsible for, I think, more than maybe another body of people, the development of appropriate cultures. We are trained in the law, we’re supposed to know the way in which things are to be done. We know what the rules are supposed to be like. We should be, again, within the appropriate context, we should be the enforcers.

To the extent that we detect issues and problems, it is our responsibility not only as members of the corporation, but as lawyers, to bring to the attention of the appropriate people problems, issues. Not only with regard to specific people and specific incidents, but also with regard to culture. To the extent that we identify cultural issues that are having a negative impact on the entities that we are a part of, we have the responsibility of surfacing those things. But it is also the responsibility of management to listen to those lawyers. It shouldn’t be difficult for lawyers to bring to the attention of management those concerns. You shouldn’t be penalized, you shouldn’t be seen as a problem if you are raising those issues.

Who do you think your constituency is, Tony? Throughout your career, not just at Uber, but who do you imagine it is? Is it the law or is it the people you work for?

TW: I think it’s both, actually. I think it’s both. I think because the law at its best is manifested in the way people interact with one another, so clearly it’s both. You asked the question, why did I take this job? Actually, the opportunity to do just that, to be able to have the impact of helping to put in place processes and systems that actually work well to protect both people, whether it’s women or people of color, or frankly riders and drivers. That was an incredible opportunity to me.

That’s really my constituents. But you know, the constituency group that you’re also speaking to, I think Eric rightly says, is management, and you had a broken system.

Often that’s the case. It’s not just there but a lot of places.

TW: No, a lot of places, but it was particularly broken, I think in all fairness. I mean look, I would not have taken this job and I would not have taken this challenge if I did not believe that A) Dara Khosrowshahi was committed to real change, and B) that it was actually possible. Because so many of the issues that Uber suffers from are self-inflicted.

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One of the things that always struck me, and especially, again, I recommend reading another New York Times’ piece called … It’s about complicity. One of the things that strikes me, as lawyers, that I’ve noticed is, they always say for example in Hollywood, they don’t have money, enough money to … They don’t seem to have money to pay women to tell stories, they have money to shut them up. They certainly can pay them off. They can do nondisclosure agreements. They can do very difficult ways not to talk about things. Talk about the nondisclosure thing, because that to me has been one of the poisons of this whole system, is that women are paid not to say anything.

I think I was the one who told Uber about someone you hired that had sexual … Not when you were there, but I actually called Travis and said this person was under investigation for sexual harassment. He was like, “What?” He didn’t know because they’d been passed on like a contagion from one company to the other. Can you talk about that issue around nondisclosure? Again, I’d like that report as soon as possible. But why does that persist, that idea of nondisclosure? As women know, telling stories has been the power of #MeToo. As people of color know, the telling of the stories, as gay people know, the telling of the stories is where the power resides. Why as lawyers do you continually keep writing these fucking things? Explain it. Explain it, how does that change? How does the law change so that people are allowed to tell their stories without this complicity, where people get to move along and pay people off, essentially?

EH: For the record, I’ve never written a nondisclosure agreement in my career. It’s particularly …

Actually, just David Boies, but go ahead.

EH: It’s particularly bad in government, as I see now.

Yeah, with the Congress right now.

EH: Right. I didn’t even know that this thing existed until the last couple of weeks. That there’s a fund that allows congressmen, some of whom were my biggest tormentors, Blake Farenthold, that fat guy from Texas, has got about $ 80,000 to keep quiet some inappropriate conduct that he had with a female …

80,000 tax dollars, but go ahead.

EH: $ 80,000 of our money. From my perspective, I don’t particularly like the notion of hiding things like that. Real progress is made by the exposure of negative conduct and then what happens to address that conduct. Having said that, there may be victims who for a variety of reasons do not want to have exposed the issues that are the subject of the nondisclosure agreement. Although more often than not my suspicion is it is the person with power who is saying, “I will only settle if there is a nondisclosure agreement.”

From my perspective, shining light on problems is the way you solve problems. But it requires a certain degree of bravery for victims to come forward and tell their stories. That’s a societal problem. It’s always interesting to me that it’s difficult for a woman to talk about a sexual assault in the way that a guy who is assaulted by a stranger in a bar, something like that, that’s a relatively easy story to tell. So why do we as a society make it more difficult for women to tell their stories?

Misogyny, but go ahead.

EH: Yeah. No, no, no, there’s a huge amount of that. There’s a culture thing that we have to change there. It always struck me that when I was a judge and when I was a U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., if a man hit a man, no question, you try that case, that’s an assault. A man hits a woman with whom he has a relationship, and then there’s all kinds of things.

Protect, allegedly.

EH: It becomes a much more difficult thing to adjudicate, to bring into the system. That’s a societal thing that we have to get at, where women are the victims. They should be not differentiated because of their gender, you’re just a victim. You’re just a victim and we need to hear your stories.

What about you and the nondisclosure thing? Then I’m going to talk about allies. About nondisclosure, where does that go? Because I think to me that is the absolute tool of tyranny among people, as much as they say, “I’m helping you by not letting you talk about your story,” you’re not doing anyone any favors by not allowing them to do that.

TW: I think that’s right, but I think that you do have to, in all of these kinds of case, approach it from the perspective of the victim. I think that has to drive the analysis, and where that flows, I think. I don’t think you … I’ve always believed that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and you never see progress in the law, you never see progress in society, when you’re using the law as something to cover up, a blanket to cover up certain things. It’s always much better if you … This is why we have open courts, this is why we have public courts, this is why it’s important. Yet, I still think at the end of the day you want to make sure, in the do no harm kind of approach, that you’re approaching those kinds of issues from the perspective of the victim.

All right, I want to finish …

EH: One thing I think we have to really … I agree with what Tony said, but I’m kind of getting back to what I said before. We’ve also got to get to the place where there can’t be shame, there can’t be an issue in being a victim. Why is it so hard — and it is hard and women who do it have a great deal of courage — in the society as we have constructed it? Why is that the case? Why is that the case?

I actually don’t, I don’t think a lot of victims are as ashamed. I think they are bullied into being ashamed. You know what I mean? I think that’s really … and because when you say, “I’m going to make it easier for you.” I think the media has kind of had it and is starting to publish these stories, as long as they can get contemporaneous assertions that these people said. I mean, the Roy Moore thing is a perfect example of that, is that these women said their stories, they didn’t wait. They had some off the record, some on the record. Now the women who are called liars by him are now coming out with even more. Like, “We’ve had enough,” despite the fact that they’ve been bullied and threatened and everything else, those sorts of things.

Let’s finish up talking about allies, we’ve only got just a few more minutes. One of the things I’ve also noted that I think is really interesting is most of the stories that have come out just recently around sexual harassment and everything else have been written by women.

All the best stories on racism and issues have been written by people of color. Most — Ronan Farrow, a gay man — who understand and empathize and have had enough of this and understand that. How do you think of yourself as allies? Because I think that it’s a critical issue, in that it’s not women’s rights, it’s human rights, it’s everybody’s rights. How do you get that empathy into the dominant culture, which is a white male culture?

Now, they talk about the idea of using VR, for example. That a policeman could watch a thing and know what it’s like to be a young black man. I don’t think you can do that because it’s a lifetime of fear. I don’t know how you do that without putting in a chip, a fear chip, into someone’s brain. How do you think about that? Because you’re both prominent men of color, how do you then use your power that you have as men, for example?

TW: There’s a real … You have to be intentional. You have to be very intentional and very cognizant. But I will say, one of the things that this whole experience as we’ve seen it unfold over the last several months has really brought home to me. Look, I’m someone who has really spent my entire life very committed to these issues, being intentional about how I recruit and who I hire and making sure that women are at the table. Raised by a phenomenal woman, my mom, who’s in the audience, Peggy West, somewhere. I grew up with strong women. Grew up with strong women and really cared about these issues.

I have to say, it was both disturbing and enlightening to come to the realization that I did not fully appreciate just how pervasive sexual harassment and sexual assault is. I think therein, you turn that into what that means is that for so many of us, we’re kind of like, it’s like air. This is the norm. What was so shocking, or so disturbing, is that for so many women this is the norm, but there’s nothing normal about it. There’s nothing normal about that. So then the question is, “Okay, then what do you do with that realization?” For me, it begins with really listening, not just hearing the stories. I do think one of the things I do fear is that when we hear the stories, and you hear so many and you start hearing the numbers, that people become numb to that.

That does concern me. But really, hearing and internalizing the universality of it, so then that becomes an opportunity to notice. To notice patterns, to notice how our language, how our behavior, how the systems and structures and paradigms in which we operate actually reinforce these power differences, which lead to sexual assault and sexual violence. Then, it’s incumbent upon those of us who can to act. Whether you’re in a position where you can act on policy or you can act in the C-suite or you can act in any way that you can.

It is remarkable that so many … everyone in Silicon Valley, and they’re just the Silicon Valley ones, every woman has a story, or six, or 10, from micro-aggressions to something more serious, and every good man was shocked. It was, “I can’t believe that, Kara.” I think it’s either, women weren’t talking about it or they weren’t listening or nobody was asking. It’s a really interesting thing.

Eric, I’m going to finish with you on this idea, bring it to a national level. It feels hopeless on lots of levels. With Roy Moore, you’ve got Trump and the Oval Office, a long list of issues around sexual harassment. How do you look at it? Are you hopeless right now? How does that change when it seems like, “Oh good God, they’re going to elect that horrible monster in Alabama, we’ve got the president here on these issues.” How do you look at where it’s going?

EH: First off, my wife is from Alabama and she used to say that in Alabama they always said, “Thank God for Mississippi.” I fear that if he’s elected, people in Mississippi will be saying, “Thank God for Alabama.” That’s how bad it could be.

I think we have here a potential inflection point that we’ve got to hold onto and we have got to make it work for all the positive things that I think it can potentially give to us, but we should not be too optimistic. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean that it’s going to lead to something that’s lasting and that’s positive.

There is, I think, the need for action, but I also think that we cannot underestimate, you all cannot underestimate the power that you have. If you don’t think that you have power, you think about the power … Trump got inaugurated and that was … We all drank, I was drunk. But you think about the power of that march the next day. The next day, all those women, my wife and my two kids had the hats with the things on, the power of …

Did you have the hat?

EH: The hats were there. There’s pictures of me in the hat though you’ll never see those. But the power that …

Signal.

EH: ?

Signal.

EH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The power that was exhibited that day and the power that has also been seen as women have gone to congressional offices, senators’ offices, congressmen’s offices, as they were in the process of trying to take ObamaCare apart. We have, you have, power. That power has to be used.

I’m old enough to remember that the people, united, focused, energized, stopped a war. Nixon didn’t stop the Vietnam War because he thought the military objectives had been met. That war was stopped because people were focused and said, “We’re not going to have it.” There was the loss of public support.

This inflection point that we have has to be something that galvanizes people, and in particular women, in particular women. In Virginia, boy, we saw women power there. Where in the election three, four weeks or so ago, women ran who said, “I’m sick of what’s going on. I’m going to run for office,” and women won. I think women can lead us to a better place with the power that they have, with the power that you have, but you’ve got to use that power. It’s not enough to yell and scream at the television watching MSNBC, Fox, CNN, whatever. You can’t … You know, just read the newspaper. What is it that you’re doing? What are you doing to make this better?

On that note, we’re over time. I want a promise from each of you of something you’re going to do. What are you going to do at Uber? I’m going to hold you to it.

TW: I have a whole long list.

But what’s the one thing you’re going to do as a male ally of the women?

TW: The one thing that … One of many things that I’m going to do is set an unambiguous tone at the top of intentionality in bringing women into every single significant decision that we make at that company.

Right. One good thing that you have going for you is that it’s an extraordinarily low bar, and we’ll talk about that later. What about you, Eric? And then we’ll finish. I want a bigger thing from you.

EH: Well, as the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, I’m going to … Yeah. I’m going to make sure that we’re going to have a fair census in 2020 and fair redistricting in 2021. And we’re going to throw out of office these … these idiots who have passed these laws who have perpetuated these systems that are anti women, anti people of color. I think that we can do this. We saw it in Virginia in 2017, we’re going to do great in the midterms in 2018, and then we’re going to put a new president in 2020. That’s more than one thing but I’m going to be successful at the NDRC, that’s my one thing.

All right, we should all make promises like this. I’m going to … I’m going to announce my new formation of the Militia Etheridge in The Castro. Get it? You can all join. But we should all make promises. I really appreciate … I started to give you a hard time but not really, sorry not sorry kind of thing. We really appreciate you as allies but as human beings, not just as male allies but as humans. Thank you.

Capcom is showing no signs of stopping with Ace Attorney releases on iOS and Android. They literally just released Ace Attorney INVESTIGATIONS [Free] onto the App Store and Google Play earlier this month and it made me think it would be a few months before the sequel shows up. I was wrong and Ace Attorney INVESTIGATIONS 2 is now available on the App Store and Google Play in Japan. I’m going to stress that this does not support English and that an English release is very unlikely. Out of the Ace Attorney games on DS and 3DS, the second INVESTIGATIONS release is the only Nintendo DS game that wasn’t localized. Watch the Japanese trailer below:

With this, the App Store in Japan is only missing The Great Ace Attorney 2 which is likely going to release soon at this rate. English speaking fans however are missing the second Investigations game which just released now and both Great Ace Attorney releases. I hope Capcom localizes at least this release since there isn’t any Sherlock Holmes and Watson related content. Many fans who have played the Japanese release on DS have held this in high regard. If you’ve never played an Ace Attorney game and want to check them out, the App Store has a lot and they are currently free to try. Check out the official Japanese website for Ace Attorney INVESTIGATIONS 2here. If you’re inclined, check it out on the App Store and Google Play. Until this gets localized, you can read Shaun’s review of the first INVESTIGATIONS release here.

On December 14, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality regulations put in place under the Obama administration. These regulations categorized broadband as a utility and forced internet service providers (ISPs) to treat all data on the internet equally.

The day before the vote, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman released details of an analysis of the FCC’s public comment process that concluded that more than two million comments were made using stolen identities. The FCC refused Schneiderman’s request that the vote be delayed to allow for further investigation, and now, he’s suing to prevent what he calls the “illegal rollback of net neutrality.”

Futurism got an exclusive interview with the attorney general in which he details why net neutrality matters, why the FCC’s repeal was illegal, and what he plans to do to stop the repeal from moving forward.

Full Transcript:

I’m suing to stop the FCC’s illegal rollback of net neutrality because the future of the internet as we know it is at stake.

The internet is the public square of the 21st century. But without net neutrality, it will become a private square — with massive corporations deciding what people and ideas get in. Without net neutrality, internet service providers will be able to censor content. They’ll get to decide which websites you have access to — and which you don’t. They’ll be able to intentionally slow down your internet service — and charge you more just to get back up to speed. Even if they promise not to do those things right now, there will be no rule against them changing those promises down the road.

Can you imagine us repealing environmental regulations because some big corporations say, “Hey, we promise not to pollute again”?

What’s more, the public comment process for net neutrality was corrupted by unknown bad actors. My office found that as many as 2 million public comments were submitted to the FCC using the stolen identities of real people — real names and addresses of people like you and me. Active service members had their identities stolen. People in my office, too. Several people even found fake comments submitted in the names of their dead parents.

But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai didn’t care. He refused to provide any help to our investigation, leaving future FCC rulemaking vulnerable to the same kind of corruption. Pai pushed through the repeal of net neutrality despite public opposition, despite our request for an investigation, and despite the terrible consequences.

We can’t stand by and watch one of the greatest tools for democracy ever created be turned into a private playground for the rich.

That is why I will sue to have this repeal overturned, and keep the internet free, fair, and open to all.

The weeks leading up to the annual holiday iTunes Connect freeze are always pretty wild, but they’ve been snowballing over the years to being these unbelievable onslaughts of new high profile games being sprayed on to the App Store. We had all hands on deck this week to review as many of them as we could, and along with all the other news of the week it’s possible you might have missed some of ’em. Here’s a quick recap:

Gorogoa, $ 4.99 – Review – With its sense of artistic cohesion and its inventiveness, Gorogoa impressed me as few other puzzle games have, and I can’t see any player who enjoys puzzle games even a bit not enjoying it. It might not be the longest game in App Store history, but it also doesn’t overstay its welcome, which can be an issue with story-heavy puzzle games. Gorogoa really is a gem of a game that belongs on most people’s devices and one that will cast its magic on you as soon as you start playing. …Read More

FEZ Pocket Edition, $ 4.99 – Review – Fez is a very good game, and I love how the player never really faces any consequences for failure. It goes a long way in creating an experience that’s fun from beginning to end, instead of being loaded with frustration because you ran out of continues and missed a jump. The virtual controls are basically in line with most other games that have reasonably decent virtual button configurations, but the “real” way to play Fez is with an MFi controller.

Whether you pair a controller, or wrestle with virtual buttons, as long as you’re actually playing Fez, you’ll be in for a great time. …Read More

Life Is Strange, $ 2.99 – Review – Since this is the first episode, Dontnod did a great job with making me hate the episodic format upon release. The first episode literally had me craving for more and the wait for episode 2 was unbearable. You won’t need to worry about that because Episodes 2 and 3 are available right now via in app purchase with the remaining episodes launching early next year. I hope the visual issues and some performance issues are ironed out because this could end up being the best way to experience Life is Strange. The lack of proper controller support is baffling because this exists on multiple consoles. Out of all the point and click adventure experiences available today, Life is Strange is my favourite by a long shot. I hope this does well for Square Enix so they can port Life is Strange: Before the Storm as well. …Read More

Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty, $ 7.99 – Review – Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty! is a faithful port of an excellent classic remake. If you game with an MFi controller, it’s a ridiculously easy title to recommend. In the absence of that option, you need only ask yourself how well you can cope with what is a relatively complex layout of virtual buttons. If nothing else, the controls are better here than they were in the other mobile Oddworld titles. If you were okay with those games, you’ll be more than fine here. If not, you may want to skip this one. But I really do suggest giving them a solid go. The game is fantastic, and if you have to spend a little time adjusting to the controls to experience it, you’ll still find the effort worth it in the end. …Read More

Ace Attorney INVESTIGATIONS, Free – Review – Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth is a little different from the usual Ace Attorney game, but it carries a similar feel and quality that should please fans of the other games. The mobile version is sensibly improved from the original Nintendo DS release, as well. Adventure game fans would do well to give this game a look. As with other Ace Attorney games, it’s a bit of a long haul, with over 20 hours of play required to reach the ending, but you won’t notice the time passing by for a pretty good portion of that. …Read More

Playdead’s INSIDE, Free – Review – I probably would’ve scored Inside quite a bit lower had the port not be so unbelievably well done. I started playing it on my iPad, and it occurred to me that I should check and see if it’s iPhone X optimized. I downloaded the game on my iPhone, and not only is it in full iPhone X widescreen, but it just automagically loaded my save game from my iPad on the first launch without me needing to do anything. This kind of cross-compataibility and iCloud syncing magic is the exact kind of future I want to be living in. Developers bringing their games to the App Store from other platforms should take a good long look at Inside.

If you enjoyed Limbo (or similar trial and error puzzle games), chances are you didn’t even need this review to smash the buy button- You’ll really dig Inside. However, if you’re like me and aren’t really into the obtuseness of it all, there’s a lot to like about it but I’m not sure I’d consider the game a must-have. …Read More

“Millions of fake comments have corrupted the FCC public process — including two million that stole the identities of real people, a crime under New York law,” Attorney General Schneiderman said in a statement. “Yet the FCC is moving full steam ahead with a vote based on this corrupted process, while refusing to cooperate with an investigation.”

The attorney general’s office stated in a December 13 press release that more than 5,000 people had already filed reports with the office about the use of stolen identities to add comments on the net neutrality repeal. These stolen identities included multiple deceased Americans, minors, elderly persons unaware of the FCC vote, and even a U.S. Navy service member that was on an airplane at the time a comment was posted in their name.

Image credit: Office of the New York Attorney General

The FCC General Counsel has refused to cooperate with Schneiderman’s investigation into the fraudulent votes, and despite Schneiderman’s efforts to stall it, the FCC plans to hold the December 14 vote as scheduled.

“As we’ve told the FCC: moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of our public comment process and reward those who perpetrated this fraud to advance their own hidden agenda,” said Schneiderman. “The FCC must postpone this vote and work with us to get to the bottom of what happened.”

You can investigate whether an identity has been used falsely and report misuse to the Attorney General’s office through their Fake Comments Portal.

Ending the Internet as We Know It

Should the net neutrality repeal go through, it would undo requirements laid out in the Open Internet Order of 2015, which classified ISPs as “common carriers” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This is the same category that phone and electricity providers fall under.

Just as an electric company can’t decrease the reliability of a person’s power because they use a washing machine manufactured by a competitor, the Open Internet Order requires that ISPs treat all data on the internet equally. That means a provider can’t slow down your buffer speeds if, say, you watch your favorite show through a streaming service run by a competitor.

The FCC’s public comment process is valuable as it gives the commission a way to hear directly from citizens on any proposed policy changes. The significant amount of fraudulent activity that took place during the net neutrality comment period must be investigated for the process to retain its legitimacy.

Still, given that FCC chairman Ajit Pai has previously expressed that the number of public comments opposing the plan — an estimated 98.5 percent of all legitimate comments — will not convince him to change course on the repeal, the point may be moot in this particular instance.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman issued an update today on his office’s investigation into fake FCC net neutrality comments. More than 5,000 people have filed reports with the office over fake comments, the group says, and up to 2 million comments misused Americans’ identities. More than 100,000 came from New York, Florida, Texas, and California separately. As we reported last month, and as Schniederman confirmed again today, the FCC has refused to help with the investigation.

Schneiderman said in a public statement: “As we’ve told the FCC: moving forward with this vote would make a mockery of our public comment process and reward those who perpetrated this fraud to advance their own hidden agenda. The FCC must postpone this…

The surprise release of Ace Attorney Investigations last week caps off a strong push by Capcom over the last couple of years to get just about every entry in the series onto mobile devices. The mobile ports have been excellent, offering crisp, high-resolution versions of the DS and 3DS cult hits. On top of that, they’ve been coming frequently enough that you might find yourself falling a little behind on picking them up, in fact. If that’s you, you’re in luck. To celebrate the release of the latest game, Capcom has cut the price of every last Ace Attorney game on the App Store and Google Play. This limited time sale is your chance to catch up on these great courtroom adventure games.

If you’re using Google Play with an Android device, it’s simple enough. All four of the titles available on Android have had their up-front price tag reduced to $ 11.99. On iOS, the games are sold with a slightly different structure. They usually charge $ 0.99 for the first episode, then sell the rest of the episodes a la carte or in one big package through IAP. What Capcom has done for this sale is to drop the initial episode’s price to free, and reduced the cost of the IAP to unlock the full game for each. Prices are as follows, in US dollars:

Those are really great prices for some really awesome games. I should note that while Capcom likes to err on the side of caution in its App Store descriptions and only claim support for the latest iOS version that was available when each app was last updated, all of the games apparently still work on iOS 11. It has also been pretty good about keeping them working, so I doubt they’ll be abandoned anytime soon. It’s uncertain how long this sale will go on for, so as usual you’d best grab what you want as soon as possible.

Capcom’sAce Attorney series of visual novel court drama games have existed for years on Nintendo handheld systems. While many have already been re-released on Android, one of the few missing from our platform was Ace Attorney Investigations – Miles Edgeworth. This is no longer the case as Capcom has just released the title on the Play Store, and it’s even on sale for a limited time.

Ace Attorney Investigations – Miles Edgeworth is the fifth game in the Ace Attorney series.

The first full week of December is nearly behind us and the holiday season progresses. It being Friday, it’s time for some more app sales! The list today is mostly our standard lackluster affair, but amongst the yawning, you will find that Capcom has placed three of the Ace Attorney games on sale. Good stuff.